


Georgia Flyer

by wonderwhatthisbuttondoes



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Jesse has a vivid imagination, Misunderstandings, OC Character Death, Omnic Crisis, Omnic Terrorisim, Origin Story, Young Jesse McCree, gets pretty dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 04:31:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12203937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderwhatthisbuttondoes/pseuds/wonderwhatthisbuttondoes
Summary: Why doesn't McCree trust higher-tech weapons?  Try growing up as a little kid during the Omnic Crisis.





	Georgia Flyer

**Author's Note:**

> I'm picturing Jesse as somewhere between six and eight years old here.

Jesse lined up the shot carefully. One bullet left, he had to make it count. Tumbleweeds spun lazily on the plain behind his target as the world drew in-  
“ _Bang,_ ” he whispered (he wasn’t stupid after all), and pulled the trigger.  
The tiny piece of gravel he’d launched hit the suit-clad shoulder of the smiling man he was aiming for with a sharp ‘thak!, hard enough to dent the religious brochure the guy was printed on. Quickly, Jesse glanced at the other side of the laundry room to see if his mother or aunt Julia had caught that, but his mother was still folding clothes, and though aunt Julia paused for a moment as though listening, she wasn’t looking at _him._  
Time to move. His target was wounded, but not down. Maybe the black-suited man wore some kind of body armor, like the soldiers on TV. Jesse dove under the nearest table, re-loaded his modified rubber-band gun, counted to three, and risked a dash for the cover of the cliff on his right. He made it.  
Watchtower-guy was still coming though, moving with unhurried, deliberate strides through the low-brush desert just past the edge of town. The black-coated bastard had been after him ever since Abilene…

Jesse moved, a pop-out shot that went wide and ricocheted off an outcropping of sandstone, throwing chips of broken rock and a puff of dust. The pebble that had just bounced off the corkboard rolled away underneath a washer. He was running out of ammo. Feeling around on the sandy ground beside him, Jesse came up with a dandelion-head’s worth of grimy dryer-lint, the thin red loop of a broken rubber washer, a small metal screw with a pointy tip, and… the smooth tip of an undamaged bullet. He picked it up wonderingly, and rolled the metal sphere between his fingers. The ball bearing was only slightly larger than the pebble-ammo he was used to. It was _perfect_. It was a special bullet, a silver bullet, it had to be, even if watchtower guy was a werewolf he could kill him now, and they’d finally be able to stop running…  
Black-coat guy wasn’t stupid, though. He’d have to draw him out.  
Jesse loaded the last shell of his usual ammo, and shot into the brush on his right. It pinged with entirely unnecessary force off a metal bucket half-hidden by the sagebrush (the galvanized trash can under the folding counter), and-

“JESSE!”

Cautious reconnoiter, his mama still had both her sandals on-  
“-Yes’m?” he called around the corner of a chipped, tan-painted dryer.

“No shootin’ inside! How many times ‘ave you got to be told?”

“But there was-” Jesse began.

“-Were you shooting at _Jesus_ again?” Aunt Julia interrupted, having followed Jesse’s field of fire to the flimsy tabletop brochure-stand and trying very hard not to snicker.

“No! That was jus’ one time, ah swear-”  
A washer about halfway between them made a dull click, and began filling for it’s rinse cycle.  
“-And anyways I found a real bullet!” Jesse blurted out, and immediately regretted it.

Julia exchanged a glance with her sister, and put down the shirt she had been folding.  
“Show me,” she demanded, stopping in front of Jesse and looking down at him.

Jesse froze for a moment, torn. He knew he’d have to give her the bullet sooner or later, but he _didn’t want to_ it was his, he’d found it, and it was _perfect_ \- ...she didn’t know what the bullet looked like. Maybe if he gave her the little metal screw he’d found instead. He was a kid, right? Auntie J _might_ buy that a screw was a pretend-bullet, but…  
Jesse’s fingers danced over the contents of his pants-pocket in an agony of indecision.  
Aunt Julia folded her arms.  
“But- um- okay, hangonnasecond.,” he fumbled.  
Screw. Actual Real Bullet. Lint. Screw. Bullet. Screw…

“Jesse boy, I’m gonna to count to three...”

The rinse-cycling washer began to spin.

“ONE-” Aunt Julia began.

Was a bullet _really_ worth lying to auntie J and probably mama too?

“TWO-”

...Where would he ever get another one?

“THR-”

That washer was _really_ loud. ...there was nobody else _here_ , and the dark, faintly-sudsy face of the-  
“-There ain’t no clothes in that washer!” Jesse realized aloud.

As though it had heard him calling it out, the washer’s magnetic lock failed and the door sprang open with a violent clang, cracking the round glass window, spraying whipped-up water for twelve feet in all directions, and loosing the rest out onto the floor in a swift-moving wave.  
It reached Jesse’s mother first. In the split-second before the lights went out, she looked up at Jesse and Julia, her brown eyes wide.  
Then all the power in the building went out, and the washer that had exploded a moment before electrocuted itself.  
Vague shapes of the rows of washers and dryers in the dark, jumping, twisting snakes of lighting wrapping around his mother, her screaming, the hiss of spreading water, or maybe that was just the rushing in his ears, he had to get to-

“Jesse, NO!” Aunt Julia had him by the arm, then one shoulder, as he fought like a wild thing to get loose.

“NOOO MAMA LET ME GO LET ME GO WE HAVETA SAVE HER LET! GOOOO!”

“Shut UP,” Aunt Julia snapped, terrified past the point of anything but an immediate and heartbreaking tactical decision. She grabbed her nephew under one arm, and sprinted out of the building with the water spreading across the dark linoleum tiles only a half-step behind. They fell face-down a few yards out into the gravel parking lot, and lay there. When Jesse’s mother has stopped screaming and Jesse had started, Julia wasn’t sure. She lay on her side and pulled the boy close, curling her knees up and staring out into the night. Her eyes were wet, and the stars fractured, and spread a little. Insects chirped out in the Georgia woods beyond her line of sight, then gradually nearer. The laundromat was silent, but for now and then, a drip of water. Jesse had stopped screaming. Julia tilted her head down and pressed a thankful kiss into his messy brown hair.

Jesse squirmed out of aunt Julia’s arms and stood facing her, breathing hard even through his tears.  
“You- yuh let my- my- mama DIE- wh- what the HELL- auntie J...?”

“Oh my god, Jesse, honey, it was a trick. The computer virus back there wanted ta kill us all, and if we’d a’ touched that water, we’d a’ died too. I- I didn’t- ...ohmy god…” Julia started crying again.

“YOU! LET HER! DIE!!” Jesse screeched, completely beyond the reach of logic.

“She was already DEAD I had to save YOU!” Julia yelled back at him, trying not to let her young nephew’s words on top of what she’d just seen erode her certainty of WHAT she’d just seen.

“NO SHE WASN’!” Jesse yelled back, his voice choking again. He stomped a few steps away, and picked up something off the ground, beating it twice against his knee before pulling his small, well-worn cowboy hat down tight over his head. “I- ...NO!” He said sharply, and stomped off in the direction of the van. It stood peacefully beside Julia’s motorbike, under a dead streetlight.  
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Crrustle…  
Silence.

Julia sat up, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. The palm of the left, and the knuckles of the right, the one that had been holding Jesse, were scraped. She wondered if Jesse was scraped somewhere too. Clearly the next few days were gonna be a barrel of monkeys. She’d have to cache either the van or the bike. Probably the bike. ...Dammit.  
She’d lost. Her _sister_.  
“Ohmygod…” Julia muttered into her hands again.  
Wait. An Omnic virus out _here_? This town was actually borderline rich, they had _scanners_ …  
Unless the omnic virus had infected something else nearby that could stick a wireless chip on older-model offline machines, and if that-  
Oh FUCK this noise, they had to get out of here.  
“JESSE?” She called, getting to her feet.  
Nothing. Julia tried again with the same result. She broke into a run.

Jesse surveyed his targets from behind a blue plastic rain barrel. An open train car, and an equally open train yard with what looked like people who would be friends with aunti-  
Stopit.  
Not now. If he started crying again they’d find him.  
People. Just people. Guarding some wooden boxes. Or something.  
Well, if they liked boxes, all he had to do was stay far away from those.  
The train car was open on both sides…  
He could cross the tracks, underneath the train, and climb in from the other side.  
What if it started moving though? He’d be cut in half…  
-And probably see his mom again.  
The thought stole the air from his lungs, and Jesse bit down hard on a handful of his shirt and screamed into it, twice. He squeezed his eyes shut, because he couldn’t see anyway.  
None of the teenagers lounging around on the boxes heard him. There was a low murmur of talk, and one of the two who were sharing a cigarette laughed.  
Jesse came back to himself.

Now the scene in the yard was busier, they were actually loading the boxes, and there were two more people standing around who looked… sharp, in the way of people he’d be told to stay away from.  
Jesse moved off as quietly as he could, back out into the dark. Down the tall, hulking line of closed train cars. Hyu_____. Georgia-Pa____. One too covered in spray paint to tell. Santa F_-  
All up and down the line, the brakes unlocked with a rippling clang.  
Jesse’s heart jumped, suddenly racing. He dove between the axles of the nearest train car and out the other side with a feeling of freedom that dried like the cold sweat in his hair as he saw how far it was to the door of the open train car. Hat still attached to him by the string under it alone, Jesse ran for all he was worth. The door up ahead shut firmly. Jesse damned it under his breath, and kept running. Maybe… just maybe, it wasn’t locked.  
He made it onto a ladder on the _back_ of the car he wanted just as the train lurched off, and climbed aboard in a desperate scuffle of tennis shoes and elbows.

The side-door may or may not have been locked, but it was eighteen feet of no-handholds-at-all ahead of where he was. Jesse wasn’t brave enough to climb up the ladder to the roof just yet, but a curve in the tracks up ahead gave him one last look back at the station of the town he’d just left, all lit up ...and already so far away.


End file.
